2018 Poldark, the fourth season: Four Swans through Angry Tide

Aidan Turner as Ross Poldark brooding (near the opening, early still after the prologue)

Elinor Tomlinson as Demelza Poldark (near opening &c), singing, troubled

All we know is this moment, and this moment, Ross, we are alive! We are. We are. The past is over, gone. What is to come doesn’t exist yet. That’s tomorrow! It’s only now that can ever be, at any one moment. And at this moment, now, we are alive — and together. We can’t ask more. There isn’t any more to ask … Demelza to Ross (last page of The Angry Tide).

Dear friends and readers,

A second Winston Graham blog-review in a row! Beyond Poldark, Graham is the author/source of the misbegotten Hitchcock movie, Sean O’Connor play and now perverse opera Marnie. This time, mostly due to the excellence of the two source novels, Poldark novel 6, The Four Swans (A novel of Cornwall, 1796-97), and Poldark novel 7, The Angry Tide (ditto, 1798-99 is listening), the film adaptation is well worth the watching and thinking about. I declare myself (as loud as I can, in the hope someone with power to realize Poldark novels 8-12, might hear me), I’d love to see the same cast or another (as the Netflix series The Crown has done) film Stranger from the Sea, Miller’s Dance, Loving Cup, Twisted Sword and Bella [misnamed by an editor, ought to be Valentine], 1810-20 as further serial drama seasons for Poldark. Begin two years from now ….

NB: I have eschewed summaries (except to compare the older series in the comments) and concentrated on the realization of the novels as 2018 TV serial drama.

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Turner as Ross eloquent and bitter does bring out the central economic power issues

Elise Chappell as Morwenna grieving over the coming hanging of Drake — a very French revolution scene because of the bars …

Episodes 1 & 2 are much changed from the last part of Graham’s Four Swans. Prologue: Ross standing on the beaching is having bad dreams about Demelza and Hugh Armitage. Story (Episode 1): What had been a politically meaningful series of violent thievery because the people are starving (Corn laws keeping the price of bread very high), and Bassett’s demand for scapegoats, with which Ross feels forced to cooperate, becomes a highly personal melodramatic story involving Morwenna and Whitworth since Horsfield replaces the people in the book rounded up (with one poignant man hung) with the two Carne brothers and Zacky Martin’s son. It’s out of character for gentle religious Sam and the now withdrawn depressed Drake to be in a riot, but now Horsfield can make Ross central hero: he’s off to Bassett’s to try to get them off, and failing, comes to the hanging, where his impassioned speech on their behalf improbably reprieves them. Nothing like last minute reprieves from scaffolds. I was moved by Zacky Martin’s grief for his son. The general primary scenes in the book and in the old series – at Lord Dunstable’s house and Bassetts — become secondary, brief. Horsfield also builds up the romance scenes between the three couples with very explicit dialogue. I liked the conversations between Ross and Demelza over the course of the hour as they work out their estrangement; some of this from the book.

Horsfield’s way of making Ross’s now agreeing finally to become an MP to prevent such personal injustice (the result of many such episodes in previous seasons) gives the new series a kind of unity and simplifying single thrust forward it didn’t have in the first series. In the book Ross’s refusals come out of subtler psychological reasons in complicated circumstances.

Episode 2 again Horsfield turns a realistic depiction of the way the world then worked into a personalized heroic drama. As Ross is dragged into replacing Armitage (now dying) in the election against Warleggan, we dwell on Ross’s complicated psychic life: Horsfield sets up juxtapositions between the elections and Armitage dying with Demelza supposed to love him but reluctant to be seen by his side. So the story is now Ross in public succeeding without having bribed anyone or even run a campaign — while Warleggan is intimidating, threatening and bribing people (to no avail finally). One side effect is Dwight becomes more central as presiding physician. In the book and first series Armitage was allowed to die slowly and only after Demelza is seen grieving separately, and Ross seen devastated and embittered by her grief for another, that the new election starts and The Angry Tide starts. Conversations between Demelza and Ross oddly didactic in all 3 iterations (book, 1970s series, this new one) but he came out of them the finer soul.

Ciara Charteris as Emma Tregirls watching the wrestling match

Tom York as Sam badly hurt

Secondary stories: Sam loses to the lout Harry partly because at the end of the fight Harry insinuates that Emma has gone to bed with Harry. A little later Emma says she had not; Sam’s heart was not in this violence in the first place — he is a believing gentle methodist. The true plangent note was struck by bringing in Drake’s distress for Morwenna: she still holds out against the bully Whitworth. Caroline’s finding herself pregnant and making a joke out of how she doesn’t want this baby. Horsfield shows no feel for this couple – in the original an earnest sincere man coupled with an incompatible “gay” lady; in the 1970s an earnest hard-working physician engaged with his patients married to a frivolous aristocrat who wants to spend her life socializing — the whole thing rings false, coy, with Luke Norris as Dwight embarrassing.

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Ross reading letters in London

Max Bennett as Monk Adderley emerging from darkness

Episodes 3 & 4: After the death of Hugh Armitage in the previous, and Ross’s agreeing to run and his win, he goes to Parliament in London. He and she talk of a different life for both, with her remaining in in Cornwall in charge and taking care, while he goes to London to argue ferociously in parliament on behalf of good causes. Exchange of letters using over-voice contains good feeling. Recess and everyone comes home – Ross and Whitworth in the conversation that opens Graham’s Angry Tide: Ross tells Whitworth to give his curate Odgers what he should get and he’ll help him — thematically effective underlining. In Cornwall Warleggan to the fore with his throwing a large party to make the right connections in which we meet the insinuating Adderley who insults Ross out of instinctive envy (I took you for a down-and-out troubadour). Whitworth visiting Pearce learns of embezzlement, tells Warleggan and his uncle so hypocrisy of the most sordid type, and underhanded dealings can ruin the good banker, Pascoe. Meanwhile well-meant mine venture flooded because supports not well-built (in book Sam allowed to be hero, but Horsfield will not allow anyone but Ross to be chief rescuer)

A Madonna-like moment

Esme Coy as Rowella selling herself

Private life themes: Rebecca Front as Lady Whitworth, the harsh mother-in-law, her snobbery, Whitworth indignant at Morwenna refusing him sex (coerced marriage seen rightly as rape), seeks out Rowella now she has not had a child. Horsfield’s further ill-conceived changes flattening and making senseless subtle characters: Demelza now she bickers with Ross (made resentful, she wants to go to London, the feel is of an estranged couple who from far away love one another but close by end up in much awkward uncomfortable talk); Elizabeth exults in George’s amorality (she made unlikable) while George made one note villain (life seems lived to get back at Ross). Verity’s good feeling visit; Geoffrey Charles now grown made naive. Caroline having given birth Dwight confronted with baby fatally ill unwilling to tell her as she clings absurdly to her indifference (all the while never putting the baby down). But when baby dies (a moving scene), she is all funereal and must to London with Ross to get over it. Excruciating painful scenes drenched in melancholy: Emma tells Sam she must marry elsewhere; the attempt to put Mowenna in asylum. Meanwhile Demelza has engineered a marriage between Drake and Rosina.

Beautiful and effective shots throughout, suggestive psychology, casual effective landscapes, but scenes move too quickly, are too brief for us to appreciate them, and to make effective the amount of action and rich nuances of feeling piled in.

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Episodes 5 & 6: I thought 5 very good except in those places where Horsfield, it seems to me perversely, alters the story or characters. Many of the minor characters were very effective in this episode (Rebecca Strong as the woman bully &c).

Luke Norris as Dwight: his best moments are when his character is acting as physician

London scenes: On the whole well acted, powerful atmosphere in London, corrupt parties, the pressure, and the political skein of given-and-take between Ross and Falmouth throughout, and Ross’s friendship with Bassett especially. Adderley effective. We are to find it natural that Caroline would enjoy his company? Gabriella Wilde is so painfully thin — she wears nothing low cut; they know it would be distressing to see the edges of her bones come out. I cringe when Enys cringes. Ross’s meeting with Pitt effective; yes Pitt had plans for pensions for the poor and helping them help themselves and in the book Ross does protest against just helping enslaved people and not the working poor. He does (again) seem to me to be sitting on the wrong side of the benches The Tories were in power and he is there as a member for a Tory patron, Lord Falmouth, very well acted by James Wilby. She adds scene between Elizabeth and Ross over Geoffrey Charles to once again make Ross the hero: this time he is saving the boy from bad company, from being beat up by them, but of course these are peccadilloes he just needs to outgrow. We should be glad that he is not characterized as going after girls aggressively as another “boys will be boys.” In the book Elizabeth stays away from Ross lest she rouse George’s jealousy. Elizabeth is taking a great chance, and Ross himself regards her warily as strongly self-centered. He has no need to remind her that she can try to misrepresent the date of her parturition.

Amelia Clarkson as Rosina Hoblyn

Harry Richardson as Drake the morning he is to wed Rosina

Cornwall: A powerful moment when Dwight’s baby dies & he grieves, Horsfield gives Aidan Turner as Ross some lines remembering the death of his daughter. Ross at first just uses the word daughter, and Dwight assumes he means Clowance: Dwight may have forgotten Julia, but Ross has not and Turner renders the lines and memory very touching. I would have liked to have the script so I could have exactly the lines. Neither film adaptation has dared to present the Morwenna-Rowella relationship or Rowella’s story truly candidly: Rowella is presented as poisonously promiscuous, reminding us of a snake; Whitworth is a sadistic rapist; his son is a horror from birth (just another just like him). The film-makers are afraid of this material: they dare to present Drake as depressed but that’s as far as it goes; he is fierce (as Harry Richardson is not) and in the first series (Kevin McNally) he was as obsessive as any character in Proust. The scenes leading up to and the murder of Whitworth powerful (these in the book and first series) juxtaposed to invented happy scenes of Rosina and Drake (these are Horsfield’s invention; in the book he remains reluctant.

So then what does the writer do: she has Demelza, Demelza (!) inform Drake just before he is about to wed Rosina that morning that Whitworth is dead and Morwenna supposedly free. That’s the last thing she would do. She has engineered this marriage, done everything to bring it about. In the book he hears from someone else and runs off to help Morwenna live again (he loves her truly and it is partly unselfish to rescue her) and Demelza is desolated because she and all and he agree if he had wed Rosina, he would have been true to his vows. In this episode he asks Demelza why did she tell him? Good question. She has ruined a possible happiness. She says he would not have forgiven her. Clearly untrue and anyway whom is she thinking of here? I like that Rosina as a character is built up, and that Sam is beginning to flex towards conventional aggression against bullies in order to help his brother. Sam and Drake’s relationship is beautifully done — as it was in the first series.

The story of Warleggan’s Machiavellian near-bankruptcy of Pascoe’s bank, Demelza’s actions to help prevent this, the yielding of Basset to make a consortium appealed to me — and it’s done close to the book. I like the actor, Hope, who plays Harris very much and bringing in his daughter and her ne’er do well husband economically stranged by the Warleggans is effective.

Richard Hope as the ever patient, decent, reasonable appealing Pascoe — more idealized in this series than the book or first series

Aidan Turner must be kept before us as the hero in every episode, and each young male needs to be seen nearly naked in the water — so we’ve Ross several times, Drake once and Dwight who for a moment seemed to be killing himself by hanging on the surface of the water.

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Episodes 7 & 8: At moments as a pair unbearably moving. Best when closest to the book. It truly gets the emotional pain of what is happening across up close and intensely. I felt the way I do when I read the book. Oddly I especially admired how the film-makers got across how Caroline can be regarded as irritating — she is so into London culture and so comfortable in it that while at first both Demelza and Dwight seem to be glad of her knowhow, when they realize how hollow this social life is, she becomes the alien to them, someone who could approve of duels. Again Dwight and Caroline talking through the dog. Here the angrier and more individualized Demelza is more fitting; Angharad Rees was just too sweet. Turner as Ross and the actor playing Adderley were pitch perfect: Turner is very good at steely ferocity. The Morwenna plot has been done far more strongly all along and here hits a core of anguish the equivalent of the book. This the photography was fitting — the scene of the duel was beautiful — blacks and whites. Elizabeth in the book is not complacent but as Horsfield has made her so, now that she is shaken out of it, her desperation becomes more effective. I liked the use of darkness, the way the rooms were angled. I don’t know if others recognized Adrian Lukis as Sir John Mitford: he was Wickham so long ago in the 1995 P&P.

Ross and Demelza beginning their time in London so well

Demelza not sure how to react but right away seeing that something is wrong with the way Adderley is speaking to her

First just 7 Three powerful striking stories: how Demelza and Ross’s time in London begins so well when they are alone but once in society, she is taken advantage of by a vicious male egged on by Warleggan. Ross’s manhood is threatened when Demelza does not reject Adderley thoroughly: she is not attracted to him, she even quickly sees and feels what a shit he is, but does not know how to put him off.. The one element left out is that part of this is her low status: this is a deeply hierarchical society and in the book Angry Tide the point is made that many of the people in London despise Demelza and the men regard her as simply probably available. That’s what she can’t handle. further (as in the novel Demelza at her first ball) Ross refuses to give her any help; he refuses to recognize or cannot see she needs help or why. they really dwelt on this far more than 1970s where none of this really came up (as it did in th 1975 first season adaptation of Demelza) The photography was superb. Did others notice how the screen sparkled as the dawn came and then turned into the park where the duel occurs?

Horsfield then tied this story to the other two. By simple means of juxtaposition: we move from Ross-Demelza to Morwenna-Drake and just before the crisis of the duel, Morwenna turns up at Drake’s forge and tells him her inner torment after years of violation, of martial sadistic rape. She is a bit too pathetic in her encounters with the mother-in-law because Horsfield has been so unwilling to make her hate the children she has born by this monster, has been unwilling to make John Conan a chip of the vicious block. If you feel like me, I wanted more of the Morwenna-Drake story in this episode but Horsfield chooses to give more room to Dwight-Caroline’s troubles.

There too there is this softening. Why cannot she allow Dwight to be stronger (as he is in the book) and just sick of London society openly and anxious to get back to his patients, a real chasm of understanding between him and Carolin: they are not truly compatible

Jill Townsend as pregnant Elizabeth with Valentine just before Geoffrey Charles makes his fatal passing comment (1975 BBC Poldark, episode 13, scripted Martin Worth)

The third story of Elizabeth’s pregnancy at first binding the two together but the glue there being so thin that a passing remark by Geoffrey Charles that Valentine looks like Ross just overturns all and George goes back to hatred. This cannnot be an easy task for Jack Farthing: basically he presents the man as cold steel, far more icy than Adderley — who in the book is a narcissistic cold sociopath. We are not really given any reason for Elizabeth to like this guy except that she likes being rich lady in society. This is tied sharply into the duel: as soon as Ross can go out he marches to Warleggan who throws the coins in his face. Thwarted by the local JP (played splendidly by Adrian Lukas — once Wickham in 1995) and the customs of acceptance of duelling, George has again not been able to destroy Ross.. but he will destroy Elizabeth as we see her pacing in the darkened room at the end of the episode.

Jack Farthing as George exposing his hatred and making a fool of himself before Sir Christopher

Episode 8: For this one I also rewatched the 13th episode of the second season of the 1978 Poldark for contrast or comparison. The older show works under the disadvantage of far less time so far less is dramatized in detail, but what is there is in mood much closer to the book, especially the bleak ending.

Far shot for duel (1975)

Heida Reed as Elizabeth seeking the doctor to help her

I found the insistence on Morwenna’s being somehow “ill” or weak by the additions grating. In the book she just appears on the horizon, and Drake runs to her, and says, have you come home? and she is taken into his arms as he takes her heavy bag in which she is hauling all her worldly possessions. Yes she goes to Trenwith, lured by the still obtuse Elizabeth and in the 2018 scene she does finally hold out, declare that Warleggan has no idea what kind of person Drake is — and that augurs well. At no point in the book is the phrase: “you are safe now’ repeatedly. Well thud, thud, thud. She doesn’t want to be safe; she is not safe with Drake in the sense he has no money, no power, no status, but she is herself, gets her identity and inviolabilty of her body back. That’s the point. Not that Drake is so sweet but that the perpetrator, the predator, Whitworth is out of her life for good.

Jane Wymark and Kevin McNally as Morwenna and Drake (1975 BBC, both series include the eloquent speech by Drake about the nature of love in marriage)

I had forgotten how much better Judy Geeson was at the part of Caroline — far more like the “gay lady” of restoration drama. She understand duelling and defends it; she also is sexually interested in Ross as he is in her and they discuss going to be with one another — and coolly decide against it. This is not the coy character all drippy over children or not that Horsfield invents, and Dwight in the 1970s one is attached genuinely to his patients and that is his identity. Again Luke Norris is made just to “icky.”

Judy Geeson as a convincing Caroline (1975 series)

The book ends with Ross saying that Death is Intolerable and it shapes all of our reality, our feelings, and Demelza replying, just about yes except that one has to accept, live with it, and realize this here, now, is all we’ve got and we’ve got to make what we can of it. I should say that Angharad Rees is herself too sweet as she utters those words and in my view Elinor Tomlinson could have projected the acceptance of hard compromise much better – she has now and again over the course of these 8 episode

Robin Ellis as a desolate Ross (1975) leaning over to kiss Elizabeth now dead (1975)

And ending on their wedding shifts the emotional temperature too much. At the end of the book George is still in a rage though at the universe now (in which he includes his children) — I liked the stance Jack Farthing manages of dignified regret and acceptance but it’s a soft Warleggan.

The new opening too emphasized Elizabeth as the “problem” or her and Ross’s love as causing much of what happened. That striking flashback at the opener and bringing back Kyle Soller for the occasion. The book and the 1970s version made the statement that life itself is hard.

So however briefer the earlier version is the stronger truer one to life. Why he and Demelza need to go on about about Hugh Armitage in this 2018 version is beyond me — they don’t in the book except the suggestive hints earlier that in killing Adderly he was killing Armitage and there is a distrust of Demelza (which vanishes in 2018) — but then she has accepted his continuing deep affection for Elizabeth. In the 1970s version we do get an intimate moment of him kissing the dead woman in her bed. Why not have that if you are softening — it’s not in the book. Again and again Horsfield turns to personalities as causing our difficult lives. Graham is wider and better than that and so was Martin Worth (who wrote the scripts for the last 4 episodes of the 1977-78 series)

The last shot: George given dignity of grief in front of Elizabeth’s grave

That said, Aidan Turner, Jack Farthing, Heida Reed and Elinor Tomlinson play their complicated roles well. Turner has grasped the essentials of Ross’s character — only softened. Elise Chapell probaby had the hardest roles. I thought Aidan Turner pitch perfect in what he had to do.He had to provide a kind of coda of stability and he managed that — though Jack Farthing got the last shot.

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To conclude, I worry to think that next year we are in for a fifth season where the present script-writer, Debbie Horsfield will be free to invent what she likes between the ending of Angry Tide (1799) and opening of Stranger from the Sea (1810). Horsfield is said to be writing X number of episodes about what happened between The Angry Tide, which ends 1799 and The Stranger from the Sea (novel 8), which begins 1810 and ends 1811. It is true once Graham’s Poldark fiction comes alive again, half-way through Stranger from the Sea when Ross and Demelza re-unite in Cornwall (as an MP he has spent the last half-year in London), over the course of Poldark novels 8, 9 and 10 (9 is Miller’s Dance, 10, Loving Cup) some of what occurred in-between is remembered and told. I speculate these brief fragments of flashback will provide hints for Horsfield to work with. OTOH, Horsfield may ignore or distort them completely. The son, Andrew Graham, has given full permission to invent stories (something Winston Graham refused to do in 1979).

Garstin Cox, Kynance Cove, Cornwall by Moonlight …

What you must do, gentle reader, is read the books (see my “‘I have the right to choose my own life:’ Liberty in the Poldark Novels” and then see the earlier serial drama (see my Poldark Rebooted, 40 years on) I regret to say that shorter and much less expensively done, the concluding episodes of the 1977-78 Poldark (Episodes 10-13) are finally more satisfying not so much because in general they were truer to the books, but because when they did differ (as all films must) the decisions made produced subtler truer-to-life drama with more effective political and feminist thought.

Not that I did not enjoy this season: it was like the last three uneven, but it had much merit, strong merit, was ethically better probably than 9/10s of what you might find on your TV or cinemas — and moving, entertaining, absorbing, beautiful, humanly strong with its visual and sound impact working on our imaginations — all those good things.

Ellen